by Rennie Saunders

Can you work without a deadline? Be honest. If someone asked you to write a paper, and said you could turn it in anytime you liked, would that paper ever happen?

For many of us, the answer is no. Many writers, myself included, recognize that a deadline is one of the necessary evils of writing. Sure, it’s fun to sit down and draft without any agenda, but when real productivity has to happen, it’s time to call in the writer’s dutiful drill sergeant: accountability.

Accountability is all about setting up real consequences and outside pressure so you can get something done. But it might not be enough to simply set a due date on your calendar. Sometimes, accountability is a very real editor breathing down your neck, telling you that your work needs to be done by Tuesday or else. Sometimes it’s a friend reading your draft, begging you to keep going so they can find out what happens in the next chapter. External motivation can save the day when you can’t figure out how to trick yourself into filling up that blank page.

But what happens when you don’t have a deadline, or an editor, or a friend reading a draft in progress? How do you summon that powerful outside force of accountability when you’re writing something entirely on your own?

It’s about learning what works for you, and then making it happen. Do you just need to carve out an hour on your calendar? Make an appointment with yourself to write and set alarms and reminders. Do you work even better if you set a goal, and then ask someone to check up on you? Tell yourself you’ll write 500 words by 5pm on Tuesday, then recruit a friend to call you at 5pm and make sure you’ve kept your promise. If you pay attention to the factors that make you more likely to be productive, you can set yourself up to succeed.

Sometimes it’s all about finding the right person to support you. If you were trying to go to the gym regularly, you’d probably call a friend and set up a time to meet at the gym every week. Or maybe you’d hire a personal trainer. When you know someone’s waiting for you, you show up. And once you show up, you might as well work out, because you’re at the gym already, right?

That’s the psychology that worked best for me as a writer, and it’s why I started my nonprofit organization, Shut Up & Write, over a decade ago. At the time, I was working on a sci-fi novel, and couldn’t focus or make progress on my own. I decided to start a writing group in a local cafe with the idea of just showing up to write. We wouldn’t read each other’s work, or critique anything at all. This group would simply write quietly together in a cafe for an hour. That was all I needed to get motivated: I just needed a place to show up and shut up.

By starting a writing group, I’d not only made a promise to myself to write for an hour a week, I’d made a promise to an entire group of writers who were depending on me to show up for them. It was a setup that was nearly impossible for me to make an excuse to abandon. And so, I showed up and I wrote. Finally, I’d figured out how to crack the code and get my writing done. I just needed a hefty dose of accountability, which for me meant setting aside a regular time to write with others.

Ultimately, accountability is about making a commitment to yourself, but it’s much easier to do that when you find people in your life who will support you. As writers, we learn to seek out friends who will read in-progress drafts, editors who will set deadlines, and in my case, other writers who will just show up.

Creating an external support system shouldn’t be too elaborate – in fact, when we try and set lofty goals it makes it easier to miss them. But an accountability system is an essential piece of a disciplined writing practice, and when you bring other writers into the mix, comes with the added benefits of community and connection.

Rennie Saunders has built an 80,000 -person global writer’s community based on his simple, highly effective formula – Shut Up & Write. Since 2007, SU&W has inspired writers of all genres and experience levels to meet for weekly writing sessions, no critiquing or feedback required. With hundreds of chapters in over 350 cities across the globe, the process is proven to work.